Critics say a recent report from the federal government housing agency is another bleak sign that Ontario politicians are not only dropping the ball on accessibility, but at a level they didn’t anticipate.
Last Thursday, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) released forecasts suggesting that the province’s goal of building 1.5 million homes in the next decade is not enough to keep up with the pace of population growth.
By 2030, if construction continues at current levels, the CMHC says Ontario will have 1.85 million homes below the number needed to bring prices down to 2003-04 levels, when the house will cost an average of 500,000 dollars. CMHC says as of 2021, the average price of a home in Ontario was $ 871,000.
For Jacob Dawang, a housing advocate for More Neighbors Toronto, the report was a hard pill to swallow.
“I felt a little desperate … just knowing how quickly and how many actions we need to take today to make housing affordable again,” Dawang said.
He wants politicians to do more and do it much faster.
“Either they are moving too slowly … or many municipalities and local politicians are denying the housing supply crisis and do not want to take action,” he said.
In response to the report, Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford said Monday that lack of supply is one of the main reasons for the housing crisis and that he wants to focus on finding empty government properties or surpluses to alleviate it. Speaking alongside Toronto Mayor John Tory, Ford said all governments need to do more and work together.
But critics say many of the solutions, ranging from ending exclusionary zoning to allowing for “justice” developments, lie in reforming NIMBYism’s housing culture and implementing the recommendations. published by the Working Group on Housing Affordability (HATF) in February. We need the political will to act on these, they say.
“We don’t need any more reports,” says Mark Richardson, technical manager of the Housing NowTO volunteer group.
“We need more housing, and there is a bureaucratic and political preference to throw the can a little further.”
Improvement at too slow a pace
Both Richardson and Dawang say resident associations campaigning against large projects that would add density to single-family neighborhoods, and politicians attending these groups to vote, remain some of the biggest obstacles to housing reform in Ontario.
“We have to make tough decisions. We have to make them now … and we have to be willing to upset neighbors,” Richardson says.
The housing legislation that the government enacted shortly before the election contains measures to streamline approval processes, but it lacks key measures such as zoning changes to allow for more density in certain neighborhoods, which advocates and experts have been asking for a long time. Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark justifies the absence of such measures in the bill by saying municipalities have told the government they are not prepared for it.
Mayor John Tory and Prime Minister Doug Ford are seen speaking at a press conference Monday after a closed-door meeting at Queen’s Park in Toronto. (Evan Mitsui / CBC)
Tory says with the support of the Ontario government, the city of Toronto has no choice but to find new solutions to accommodate the 70,000 people who move to Toronto each year.
“We’re not trying to upset stable neighborhoods,” Tory said.
“We’re just trying to say the status quo won’t be an option for us in a city that’s growing as fast as Toronto.”
Ford says the government will introduce a “very, very aggressive plan” to deal with the housing crisis.
The Prime Minister has introduced a new post of Associate Minister of Housing and has given the Minister of Infrastructure Kinga Surma an additional mandate for government real estate, in charge of finding land on which to build housing.
“I’m sure if we can standardize the process, speed up the process, put shovels on the ground, supply some of the land, whether municipal or provincial and federal, we can really move forward,” Ford said.
Get to the heart of the matter
The report, says CMHC, falls short when it comes to delving deeper into social housing, the impact of income distribution on the problem, and what types of housing are needed for urban centers. He says more research is needed in these areas.
David Hulchanski, a professor of housing and community development at the University of Toronto, says such analyzes and acknowledgments are more important than ever to get to the root of the housing crisis, especially if governments and experts insist on addressing this problem by mainly increasing supply.
But he says the report does not address market fundamentals such as housing speculation, loss of supply due to short-term rents, multiple ownership, tax evasion and money laundering on real estate and the housing financing structure.
“The reality is much more complex than the one presented here.”